


This is Not a Wound of the Heart

by gayfishman, Vrunka



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Illustrated, M/M, Masturbation, Obliviousness, Pining, Soft Stalking, Stalking, Stink Kink, but like soft core, past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:42:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfishman/pseuds/gayfishman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: It’s not stalking, exactly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by some art found right here: http://onmu.tumblr.com/post/171177304385/more-of-that-au-w-the-stolen-glances-and-mutual
> 
> Qyoo was generous to draw some more ;)

————————-

Temari would call it stalking, but following Lee during his break is absurdly easy. His very presence is like a beacon. Gaara needs only to open his eyes and look.

They end up at the gym in the center of campus.

Rickety and falling apart like everything else here. The tuition funding going somewhere other than building upkeep. But on this occasion, Gaara is thankful for it. He loiters outside by the bike rack until Lee has had sufficient time to check in, then he goes around to the back of the building.

The staff door is ajar.

It’s hardly trespassing if the door is already open.

He follows his gut, the twisting instincts that have been bugging him all week about Lee. The new and not wholly comfortable sense of longing.

He finds him in the weight room, which is hardly a surprise.

He finds him in an even looser and more revealing tank top, which is...more of one.

Gaara’s mouth goes dry at the sight. His stomach trembles. The cut of Lee’s shirt too large around his sides, his obliques are stark and easily defined, his corded biceps flexing as he lifts the weights above his head. His arms aren’t even shaking, it barely looks like effort.

And Gaara wants.

He wants.

He wants.

In a way he has never, ever before. In a way that is foreign and alien and horrible. Lee hasn’t noticed him, escape is still a more than viable option, but Gaara feels rooted. Like his feet have turned to sand, immobile, spreading and useless.

So he stays.

Compelled to.

Lee’s workout routine is exhausting even just to watch. Reps and reps and circuits.

A seemingly endless cycle of sweat and stretches and weights.

The fact Gaara was supposed to be back at work fifteen minutes ago is worthless. His entire existence is boiled down to watching Lee, becoming familiar with the shapes and seamless harmony of his body. The interplay of his shoulders and biceps.

Eventually Lee’s pace slows, stops. He is leaning over by the mirror, hands on his knees, panting. His back shifts with every indrawn breath. Shuddering.

Terribly intimate.

Gaara has to leave. He turns from the room and flees to the locker room.

Premeditated, Kankuro would say, because Gaara isn’t an idiot. But Gaara has only just started the sink running when the door pushes open.

And who should it be but—

“Oh...” Lee says. Surprise but not disappointment coloring his tone. The bright, skipping upswing of it. Gaara is getting better at hearing these things. “Were you working out?”

The question is earnest, not offensive in the way it could be. Gaara shakes his head. Opts for silence. Better than the damning truth.

“Oh,” disappointment this time, “well if you ever want to...get into it or-or have a spotter I’m always...”

He is turning to the lockers nearby. Pulling one of the locks forward, fingers spinning the dial and Gaara cannot do this. Watch Lee so casually strip.

His feet are moving before he has even fully registered it. Crossing the distance from the sinks to Lee’s side.

“I—I haven’t had the chance to shower yet, Gaara-kun,” he says, his voice tripping slightly. Trapped against the lockers. His shoulders bumping against the metal as Gaara leans further into his space.

And he’s right. He stinks. Thick and sharp and earthy. Sweat and something chemical like aftershave. Gaara’s nose has never been all that sensitive, but the smell rolling off Lee is noticeable. Intoxicating.

Gaara presses closer.

He can see the way Lee’s pupils contract, the fluttering of his Adam’s apple as he breathes short and shallow and nervous. He is nervous. Blushing. Gaara catalogues it, places each detail in a folder in his brain marked for later. For later what? He isn’t sure.

Lee’s hands curl against the lockers. There is a sheen of sweat on his skin.

Gaara doesn’t hesitate. He opens his mouth, trails his tongue up the column of Lee’s throat, the pulse beating like mad beneath his touch.

Lee makes a noise, squawking indignation, surprise. Undignified, too animated.

His hands are suddenly on Gaara’s shoulders, shoving him back. Away.

“I have to go,” he is saying, too quickly. “I have to...I’m sorry. I just.”

He is stuttering and sweating even more now. Little beads of perspiration across his brow. He moves Gaara out of his space with very little effort and more care than Gaara would have assumed possible in his panic.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m sorry.”

And then he has fled. Leaving only the echo of the door, slamming behind him.

The curl of his taste on Gaara’s tongue. And suddenly it makes sense; all the details unfurl from his brain and his orderly thinking like a centerfold. He is hard in his trousers.

Lee’s scent in his nose, in the back of his throat. Clogging. Clotting.

Jerking off is an efficient, indecent affair.

Maybe Gaara should feel guilty about that; abstractly he is aware most people would. But he doesn’t. He presses himself against the lockers where Lee most recently had been, he drags a ragged breath through his nose as he palms himself.

Anyone could come in but Gaara doesn’t care. The detail is unimportant under the weight of his sudden yearning. This foreign indecency.

He doesn’t want like this.

He has never wanted like this.

And now it cannot be stopped.

He has the forethought to slip his hand into his trousers and cup himself before it becomes too much. The pleasure cresting in a wave of all consuming whiteness, until Gaara is dragged down, down into the depths of it.

Lee’s fingers. Lee’s shins. The familiarity in the way he greets Gaara at the bus stop, a smile and wave like an old friend. Respectful enough not to speak when Gaara is reading.

It’s all too much, too much.

Gaara comes against his palm, biting into his lower lip to stave off what is undoubtedly a weak and trembling noise.

And then he just stands there.

Shaken.

Collecting his thoughts from the scattered nothing that comes from orgasm. Lee’s smell still in his nose, taunting, desirable and wild. Gaara pulls his hand from his pants, fingers curling in the mess he has made. Evidence of his own humanity—won’t his siblings be thrilled.

Shakily he makes his way to the sinks that line the locker room walls. He washes the stickiness from his palm, watches it swirl into the drain.

The episode is over.

He can forget it now.

—

Except he doesn’t.

—

It doesn’t leave him.

He is still thinking about it at the most inopportune of times. Like sitting at his desk in Earth Sciences office once he has returned to work. Supposedly looking over the latest batch of tests from the 101 students but all he can think about is Lee Lee Lee.

Lee on the weight bench, the swell of his chest as he pushes the bar up and up. The curving shape of his calves as he jumps rope. The light in his eyes as Gaara had leaned against him. The feel of his hip bone beneath Gaara’s palm, the sharp firm anatomy of it.

And his taste.

And his smell.

And the whole mess.

Gaara doesn’t outwardly groan but it’s a close thing. He shuffles the papers he cannot seem to focus on.

He needs advice. He’s never so starkly felt that before.

Another new experience to add to the list.

Isn’t this just thrilling?

—

The bus ride home is lonely.

This feeling is not new.

Gaara shifts in his seat, sinks down to glance out the window. Alone once more on route 93 as he so often has been before. Normally he would read, there’s always another chapter to prepare for class or to study for his TA position or...

But he can’t.

He’s too distracted.

Keeps glancing over to where Lee normally stands.

Lee’s fingers curled around the hand rail. His short nails, so clean and well kept. Hair usually still a little wet from his morning shower—or in cases like this, after school, from his post-workout one.

But Lee is not here.

Was scared off.

And Gaara misses him.

In solitary times like this, these unending recurring recycling moments, he always thinks of his uncle. The shattered glass of the windshield, twisted metal of the hood. Glass like diamonds across Gaara’s lap. Yashamaru’s eyes distant. And the blood.

Oh the blood.

Gaara bites his lip.

He forces the thoughts down until they are nothing more than a whisper of memory at the back of his mind. Sheer will to keep them at bay. Yashamaru’s lectures have no place here.

This is not a wound of the heart.

This is not.

Gaara curls his fingers into his palm. He counts to ten. He counts to twenty. He thinks of the blood on the dashboard, the slowly spreading seep of it.

Yashamaru’s mouth slack. So distant. So distant.

He thinks of Lee. A beautiful arm, bent graceful, and then bent further. Ripped from the joint, gouged and bleeding.

It’s not right.

Gaara backtracks. Stops the thoughts before then can blossom into more sickening fruit. He addresses them.

He starts again.

Ten.

Then twenty.

Thirty.

The ghost of his uncle leaves him. The thoughts of Lee leave him.

The loneliness does not.

It never truly does.

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art cross posted to tumblr: https://qyoo.tumblr.com/post/171757987582/visual-aid-to-go-with-vrunkass-gaaralee


	2. Chapter 2

Morning comes. Far too early. Gaara, sleepless, more jittery than usual makes his way to the bus stop. His night was plagued by further thoughts of Lee. Graphic imaginings that had him perusing his computer for names to put with them.

Most of the slang leaves an unpleasant taste in the back of Gaara’s throat. The acts themselves have his stomach feeling queasy with want and nerves.

He needs to get this under control.

This is lust, grown to become unmanageable. This is not anything more. It’s not allowed to be anything more.

Gaara turns a page in his book too viciously. The spine crackles. Broken. Annoying. He tamps down his irritation, glances up from the words just in time to see Lee.

Lee.

Approaching slowly. As tomato red as he had been yesterday in the locker room. Shame-faced. Serves him right. It’s his fault anyway for being so stupidly, unfairly attractive.

Gaara looks away when Lee waves, a tiny, half-aborted curl of his fingers. Not the usual enthusiasm at any rate.

And Gaara.

He doesn’t even know what to say. What can he say?

Gaara fidgets, his fingers are starting to sweat just slightly on the bottom edge of his book. He has to keep dragging his eyes back to it, away from Lee and his unabashedly obscene figure. All sculpted arms. All graceful neck.

His eyes flit from sentence to sentence once he has them firmly back on the page, dissatisfied; none of them are familiar. He cannot seem to remember which one he left off on before he was so callously distracted.

“Good morning,” Lee says. Like this is any other morning. Maybe slightly more sheepish, there is a question—a hundred questions—in the way that Lee says it.

Gaara doesn’t respond beyond a roll of his shoulder. No warmer nor colder than any other morning. The same as every other commute has been.

“I...didn’t mean to make you mad at me, Gaara-kun,” Lee says. Voice halting. Like his throat is blocked up. Wavering just slightly.

Gaara looks up to find Lee staring between his own feet. His eyebrows drawn together, mouth a curving little frown. He glances at Gaara; just a flicker, over and back down, intensely interested in the dirt, in where the bus sign has been thrust into the ground.

“You took me by surprise,” Lee continues. His throat bobs as he swallows. “I can never tell what you’re thinking, you know?”

You know? Of course he knows. At this point, in this situation, Gaara is just as lost. Just as out of his element. Certainly Lee must understand that.

But maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he thinks this is some cruel prank at his expense or some premeditated joke that he hasn’t been allowed in on; because he looks downright nervous. Feet shifting just slightly, knees turned inward. Fingers hanging, twitching at his sides.

Gaara shakes his head. He closes his book, slips it into his bag. He isn’t shaking at all when he says: “There is not that much to it: I’m intensely interested in your body.”

The reaction is immediate. Over the top. As can only be expected from someone of Lee’s disposition. He stiffens, goes even redder if that was somehow possible. His fingers arch, one hand flies to the back of his neck, the other curls sporadically at his thigh.

“I...Y-y-you’re joking! Right? I...G-Gaara-kun? My bo—What?!” He is stuttering, swaying slightly. He crosses his arms. Uncrosses them.

Gaara waits for the sputtering to stop, for Lee to wind himself down. At least he isn’t running again. “This is a joke,” Lee says. Finally. Firmly.

Gaara shrugs. He can make it seem so casual even though his insides feel like they are twisting in on themselves. His inner turmoil does not show. “It’s nothing personal. I just.” He thinks of the videos he had watched. Two men curled over each other; cocks red and rutting together. Off-putting on its own. But if it were Lee. Lee’s body. Lee’s cock.

“I think you would...” he trails off. A step too far to say he thinks Lee would look good folded under him, Lee’s dick jerking between them. The boundaries of what is okay for people to say to one another is mysterious still, a balancing act, but Gaara can feel that that one is not okay.

He looks up at the sky. “If I’ve offended you,” he says instead, “I didn’t mean to.”

“Offended?” Lee says. His fingers are pressing at his wrist, just below the thumb. “Offended.” He moves them away. Touches Gaara’s face without asking.

Intrusive.

Anyone else would be firmly reprimanded. But Gaara cannot fight the touch. He doesn’t lean into it either, and after a moment it leaves him.

Lee sighs. “You aren’t fevered and I’m not dead.” Lee shakes his head. “You do know what you’re saying, right?”

“That I would fuck you.”

Gaara can practically see the steam rising from Lee’s face. Gone scarlet again so quickly it’s a wonder he doesn’t faint from the rushing blood. His body seems to ripple, a shiver that Gaara can trace from Lee’s knees to the top of his head.

Offended.

Gaara probably could have handled this better. Could have squashed it before it became this way.

“I meant the apology,” Lee says, closing his eyes. “Gaara doesn’t apologize; everybody knows that.”

His cold reputation. It’s followed him forever. Gaara never has thought much on it before, wasn’t aware that Lee would have.

He shrugs instead of apologizing further. The way people perceive him is of no real concern, unfortunate but not detrimental.

Lee pinches the bridge of his nose. “So you like me?” He asks. He’s still pretty red. The just visible bottoms of his ears are scarlet.

“Your body, yes.”

Lee swallows. Convulsive. “Right. My body.”

“It’s really not a big deal. You asked what I was thinking. I told you. Yesterday won’t happen again because I...I am in control of it. It was a...”

Mistake.

Come drying on his palm, thick in the creases. Over and over. A mistake.

“Don’t say that,” Lee says. Quietly.

Gaara pauses.

The world turns.

In the trees behind them, a bird calls, calls again. Alone. It is alone.

“My advance was unwanted. Miscalculated. Foolish.”

“You just surprised me, is all,” Lee says. “I didn’t take you for the...” he lets the words hang. “I didn’t think you liked people very much.”

“I don’t.”

“But you want me. My body.”

“I think we’ve sufficiently covered that.”

Lee grins. There is a nervous sort of waver to it. The edges twitching. Teeth white and straight and perfect. He is still blushing when he says: “What would you do with my body, Gaara-kun?”

The words, even teasing as they are, alight something down Gaara’s spine. An instinct like the one that had compelled him in the locker room.

He rounds on Lee, pivots on his heel to push into Lee’s space.

Lee has been biting at his lip, the bottom one is plump and red. Shiny from his spit. Chapped. The skin across it uneven and broken. Gaara thinks of the videos he had watched; all those men kissing and kissing in the most moist and unappealing ways.

None of them had had chapped lips.

The thought burrows in Gaara’s brain like the ones from yesterday had. It finds its place among the stolen details; among the things that are so uniquely Lee.

“You shouldn’t tease me,” Gaara says. It is a fair warning. There is no jest in it.

Lee swallows. His pupils are blown even wider than usual. There is sweat on the bridge of his nose. “I wouldn’t, not about this.”

“It’s purely physical,” Gaara says. “I don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

Lee nods, though something in his eyes seems to shutter at the words. A twitch of emotion across his face. “Right,” he says. “I’m reading you loud and clear, Gaara-kun.”

“And you’re—“

He cuts himself off. The rumbling of the bus as it approaches cuts him off. Lee’s eyes flicker from Gaara’s face to the vehicle and back. He doesn’t want to be seen like this, of course. It makes sense. Purely physical, and secretive and personal. Not to be advertised.

Gaara steps back as the bus comes to a halt behind them. The gears and motor settling with a screech as the doors open for the two of them.

“We will finish this later,” Gaara says. Matter of fact. Not a question.

“Yeah,” Lee says. “Okay.”

Gaara finds his usual place by the window. He fishes his book back out once he’s seated. Lee seems...less decisive. He stares at the seats for a moment longer than necessary, then loops his hand through his usual rail and leans his head into his elbow.

The line of his body sags.

Gaara doesn’t know what to make of that.

There are a few of the other regulars on the bus with them. A blonde woman who nods in greeting when Gaara’s eyes flicker past her; a man with sunglasses who is too absorbed with looking out the window to notice.

Things as they should be.

This sudden, jarring change to Gaara’s routine doesn’t have to ruin everything.

Things are exactly how they should be.

—

“What do you mean you can’t get lunch with me?”

Temari standing at his desk with her arms crossed.

“I didn’t come all the way down here for you to blow me off, Gaara.”

“I’m busy,” he says. Indicating the papers scattered across his desk. Yesterday’s work that he never got finished. The professor has been pretty lenient with him, but Gaara isn’t really in the mood to test her patience.

And he has firmly decided his lunch break will be spent watching Lee at the gym again.

But that is beside the point.

Temari rolls her eyes. It’s the same thing she does when Kankuro does something she finds distasteful. When she is sussing out a lie of his. This is the first time Gaara has experienced it firsthand.

Something inside of him coils at the thought.

“It’s a college,” she says, “not a slave labor camp. They have to let you at least eat.” She seems to soften some, her arms move to her sides. Her mouth curls into a less harsh frown. “I worry you don’t eat enough, you know. You’re face looks awfully thin.”

“I’m eating.”

“And sleeping great, I’m sure.”

Gaara looks away. Temari is not his mother. It is his fault, of course, that they do not have a mother. He thinks of Yashamaru. He thinks of the car. The Tragedy of it all.

His lip curls.

The scar on his forehead itches.

Temari does not deserve his bright and immediate annoyance. She’s trying to be there for him, to be a good sister to him. She is trying. He can see how hard she tries.

“I had plans,” he concedes. “I was going to meet...someone.”

“Someone?” Temari pauses. Her eyes narrow. “Like...a date?”

Never in a million years would Gaara call it a date. Dates imply feelings that go beyond lust and chapped lips and rippling biceps. Gaara cannot imagine himself as anyone who would ever actually enjoy a date. Small talk. Future plans. The whole thing makes his stomach clench.

“Gaara,” she says, hands bracing on the desk. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He shrugs. Pen flashing as he marks down three questions on the quiz he is grading. He puts it in the done pile and grabs another.

Her fingers curl on his desk. The nails on her right hand are slightly shorter than her left, the paint is chipping on her thumb. Gaara looks back down at the papers.

“Are you going to tell me their name at least,” she says.

Gaara meets her gaze. Looks away.

“You’re blushing,” she says, fondly, reaching out to touch his cheek. Pausing, just briefly, before she actually does. Such casual contact has never been easy for them.

A breath.

Gaara does not pull away.

Her fingers are warm and sturdy as they pinch his cheek. Not hard enough to hurt, though Gaara tenses for it. Her knuckle drags down to his chin, taps twice before pulling away.

She is smiling when Gaara turns his attention back to the last of the tests. A warmth in her eyes and in the curl of her lips.

“Alright,” she says. “You win. I’ll see what Shikamaru is up to instead. Or Ino. One of them is bound to be free.”

He hears more than sees her getting ready to leave, straightening her coat, picking her purse up from where she had flung it onto his desk.

“You know I,” she begins to say. From the door. Voice quiet. Sincere. Like a wound.

Gaara looks up at her.

“I love you a lot, Gaara,” she says.

Love.

He does know. In a way. A confusing and abstract way. It’s been a lot of years; all of his life. He’s not sure she has ever said it before. Not sure why now she has chosen to say it.

He nods.

He knows.

She stays at the door for an extra second. Another breath, breathless, like she had been before she touched him. Like there is something else to be said.

Her shoulders fall.

She closes the door behind her.

—

Gaara doesn’t bother to hide himself this time. He uses his ID to enter the gym properly and heads directly to the weight room.

Only Lee isn’t there.

He gets a few glances from the people lifting as he pokes his head into the room, but no one says anything. None of them are familiar.

None of them are Lee.

He frowns. Backtracks past the cardio equipment and the squash rooms toward the entrance when a flash beyond the window of the yoga studio catches his eye.

Familiar bowl cut.

Lanky limbs.

Gaara stops. Turns.

There is a punching bag hanging from the ceiling; Lee is hunched down in front of it, breathing hard, bare feet on a repurposed yoga mat. Without knocking Gaara lets himself into the studio.

Lee looks up at the noise. Grins when he meets Gaara’s gaze. His nose wrinkles.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Tilting his head. Chest rising with his breathing. Falling. He’s wrapped tape around his hands and up part of his arm. Chalk dust on the mat beneath his feet.

Gaara shrugs. The answer should be obvious: same thing he was yesterday.

Lee straightens, holds a hand against the still swinging bag. A bead of sweat works it’s way down his bicep, such a small detail that Gaara soaks in like a sponge. It drips from his elbow. Falls to the mat.

Gaara swallows. Drags his attention back to Lee’s eyes.

“Just watching,” he says.

Lee makes a face. Rubs a finger under his nose. “It might not be very interesting, Gaara-kun,” he says.

“I think it could be.”

Lee blushes. Gaara is becoming accustomed to the look. Fond of it even. The way he doesn’t meet Gaara’s gaze, looking off to the side. The tilt of his neck.

Silence curls between them.

Eventually Lee turns away completely. He squares his shoulders. Bends his knees. The following flurry of blows is nearly impossible to follow, Lee is just too fast. His legs seem to be a million places at once, kicking, spinning, rolling his weight. The mat squeaks against the hardwood floor, threatening to slide with every heavy landing.

Gaara has never seen anything like it.

Lee’s fist catches against the bag, rocking the chain. It’s complaints echo throughout the room. A threat. But it does not give. Two more solid blows. A third.

Gasping, Lee comes to a stop.

His weight pitches forward, gripping the bag for support. His body is shaking. Thirteen straight minutes, Gaara is not surprised at Lee’s exhaustion. It is understandable. Sensible.

With a grunt, Lee punches the bag one last time. Something vicious in the motion. Sharp right hook.

He steps back. Covers his eyes with both his hands.

His chest moves with his breathing. Hypnotic, hypnotic.

“Seven more,” he is saying, under his breath. Barely there at all. “Just seven more. Or it’s fifty laps. A hundred sit-ups. Seven more. Just seven.”

Gaara watches, silent, as Lee fixes himself into the stance once more. Squatting just slightly, turning his body profile to the bag.

And he begins again.

Three more minutes of it and Lee once more comes to a halt. Shuddering. Shivering. He crouches this time. Bandaged fingers gripping his knees.

Hair hanging in his eyes.

Gaara has never seen anything more beautiful. More compelling.

“Four,” Lee says. To himself. Between his teeth. “Four minutes.” But even Gaara can tell that it might be something too great. An obstacle he cannot so easily overcome. Four more minutes at that pace is impossible.

Sixteen minutes at that pace should have been impossible.

“Lee,” Gaara says. Those eyes so dark they are almost black flicker over to him. Stick to him. Lee’s mouth is open and pink. Panting still. Gaara licks his own lips. He crosses his arms. “Four more minutes,” he says. “I believe you can do it.”

Again with the ripple, Lee’s whole body responding to what Gaara has said. Like an electric shock up his spine that Gaara can track in real time. Lee blinks.

When he smiles, it is bright enough and warm enough to rival the sun. Which Gaara has always thought was a stupid phrase until this very moment. Lee’s enthusiasm at being praised is enough to put even gaseous celestial bodies to shame.

“Of course, Gaara-kun,” he says. Nodding. “You’re absolutely right. Thank you.”

And then, impossibly, he is goes back to it.

He squares his shoulders.

He bends his knees.

He moves, somehow, some way, faster than before. He is a blur of green. A beast. Unstoppable. Impossible.

In Gaara’s chest something warm and festering is over-turning. Something he doesn’t know what to do with. Something frightening; just there at the edge of his peripheral.

Lee finishes. Falls back and away from the bag. Four minutes. Exactly. Not a second shy. He steps off the mat, a hand rising to brush through his hair. He turns toward Gaara.

Beaming.

He is brilliant and blinding and Gaara doesn’t know what he’s doing but it’s the locker room all over again. Gaara on his toes, pressed up into Lee’s space. There are windows—

There are windows. And Lee is stiff when Gaara’s hand brushes his side. His mouth open. His eyes wide.

“Gaara-kun,” he says, his breath ruffling Gaara’s hair, “I did it.”

“I saw.”

Lee nods. His hand lifts to press against Gaara’s where it is cradling his hip. The bandages are rough against Gaara’s skin. Lee’s warmth seeping through them easily.

“You believed in me,” Lee says. He still sounds so breathless, so wrecked. His fingers tremble where they are touching Gaara’s knuckles. “That means a lot, you know.”

It doesn’t.

But Gaara does not correct him.

Lee’s lips touch his scar, Lee’s other hand cups his neck. Anyone else...anyone else and the intimacy, the danger inherent in such a touch would send Gaara fleeing. But this is Lee.

And he wants Lee.

Lee’s body.

Gaara mirrors the motion, slide his own hand to Lee’s neck. Uses it as leverage to bring Lee’s mouth down to his own.

Kissing in the videos had been so easy.

Real life is not so simple in practice.

Lee is shaking, lips trembling against Gaara’s own when they touch. Breathing ragged though his nose. Gaara isn’t sure what to do beyond this. Everything in the porn had been so wet, so equal, mutual. And this...

“I don’t...” Gaara says against Lee’s mouth. Pulling away just enough to whisper it.

He doesn’t know what he is doing.

He only knows that he wants to be doing it.

Lee meets his gaze. So close Gaara can only focus on one eye at a time. Lee’s lashes are thick and full.

“Are you sure about this?” Lee asks. “I know you...want my body, Gaara-kun, and that’s-that’s okay. It’s okay. But I want you to be sure, okay?”

Something in his tone is cracked, broken. Seeping. Like Temari’s had been. Weakness.

“Of course I’m sure,” Gaara says.

Lee smiles, less dazzling than before, but just as warming. “Alright then,” he says. And suddenly he takes charge.

As quick as his sparring with the bag had been. Just as decisive. Just as powerful.

He pulls Gaara flush against him, slots their lips together again. The fingers on Gaara’s neck tease at his jaw, encouraging him to open.

And there is the wetness. Tongues touching. It’s gross still. Overwhelming. Sensations Gaara can barely focus on over the beating of his heart, pulse running overdrive in his throat.

Lee pulls back and Gaara takes that second to breath, to take stock.

“Okay,” Lee says again. “Okay. Okay.” He grins. His thumb drags over Gaara’s lip. The bandage tastes like his sweat, salty when Gaara slips his tongue out to follow. Lee shivers. He nods.

Then he draws away further. Gaara feels unbalanced, adrift. The loss of Lee’s hands aches, dully. Ridiculous. But there all the same.

Lee’s cheeks are red when he says: “I should finish training. I’m done at five today.”

Five. That’s hours from now. Gaara frowns and Lee chuckles.

“I’ll meet you at the bus stop, Gaara-kun. Okay?”

“Okay,” Gaara says.

It’s okay.


	3. Chapter 3

It is not okay.

Five o clock and Lee isn’t here yet.

Gaara clenches his hands, forces them to relax. His knuckles crack. The popping of each joint reminds him of Lee.

It’s annoying, really.

To be alone for so long and now to—

The thought doesn’t finish. Gaara doesn’t allow it to. It’s bad enough he spent his last class distracted, kept touching his mouth. The memory of Lee’s tongue, hot like a coal in the pit of his belly.

So much worse now that he has experienced it firsthand. Imagining it before he had practical experience seems hollow now in comparison. And he can’t help thinking about how much better all those other things will be too.

All those more intimate things.

Assuming Lee gets here. Assuming Lee hasn’t killed himself with his ridiculous training standards.

It’s five-ten.

Gaara looks at his watch and then again. Like it will make time go faster. Impatient in a way he hasn’t felt before. And something else. Down under his ribs. A slight throbbing, clenching, solitary sort of feeling.

The bus is roaring toward him. The only one that goes out to the remote housing every other hour. Gaara’s usual bus. Lee’s usual bus.

The bus rolls closer.

The bus stops.

The doors hiss as they open.

Gaara hesitates.

Gaara never hesitates in anything he does. He stares up at the driver who has turned her head to look down at him. Gaara is frozen; Lee is not here.

Five-thirteen.

“You riding?” She asks. She looks concerned, mildly. Tightness around her eyes. Frowning.

Five-fourteen.

Gaara opens his mouth.

Lee answers before he can.

“You held it for me,” Lee says. Coming up from behind. Breathing heavy, like he ran the whole way from the gym. Knowing what he knows about Lee, Gaara wouldn’t be surprised if he had. “Thank you so much for waiting,” he says to the driver, “it was truly a most wonderful thing.”

The bus driver rolls her eyes and Gaara feels a tickle of annoyance at that. Lee’s hand touching the small of his back keeps his temper in check however. Gaara boards, Lee follows.

Gaara sits.

Lee, no hesitation this time, follows.

Their knees brush; Lee sits with his legs open slightly, intruding in Gaara’s space again. Not that Gaara is really complaining.

This close, he can take a better look at Lee’s relaxed shapes. His thick brows. His square shoulders. His hands—bandage wrap free now—curl on his thighs. The material of his green athletic shorts has pulled up past his knee.

There are scars there.

In the skin.

A network of them, ringing around his shin and his knee. Deep. Gaara isn’t quite sure how he missed it before.

Lee is watching him watching.

Gaara doesn’t realize it until he pulls his attention back to Lee’s face. A cocky smile, a wrinkle in his nose. Gaara looks away, cheeks hot.

Lee’s hand moves from his thigh to Gaara’s knee. Fingers squeezing lightly. Gaara pointedly does not look over at the touch; he keeps his eyes firmly trained on the window.

“Gaara-kun,” Lee says. Under his breath, barely audible over the rumbling of the bus.

Gaara spares him a glance. Acknowledgement.

“Will you tell me about yourself?” Lee asks. His fingers tighten again. His palm has begun to sweat.

“What’s the point in that?”

Lee makes a face. Exaggerated frowning. Brows drawing together like he is thinking hard about the question. “I just...want to know more about you. Sensei says that to truly plumb the depths of Eternal Bonds one should do everything to learn about their...friends. The easiest way to do that is, well, just to ask I guess.”

Gaara’s eyes narrow. “Are we friends?”

That expression again. The one Gaara does not know how to parse. Flickering, momentary. “Probably not,” he says, “but I’d like to be. These kinds of things are easier that way, aren’t they?”

“These things?”

Lee’s face is red, red, red when he says the words: “Fuck buddies.”

A term Gaara had not thought to ascribe to it. He mentally turns it over in his head. Fuck buddies. Implies no deeper connection beyond physical. Nothing so pitted and frankly terrifying as lovers. Fuck buddies.

“Will you let me fuck you?”

Lee looks away at the question. His eyes shut. His hand draws back from Gaara’s knee to pinch the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. Animated. Gaara has never seen someone so animated. “You shouldn’t just say that, you know.”

“You wanted me to be clearer,” Gaara says. He can feel himself smiling. Lee’s ridiculousness rubbing off on him. It’s an indulgence he will most likely regret once this whole affair is done, but in the moment, it feels nice.

Lee sighs. His shoulders shift, melting down in the seat. His hand settles this time atop of Gaara’s, fingers tracing the bumps of Gaara’s knuckles. There is something unsure in the motion, a lightness in the pressure of Lee’s touch against him. Not fully committed. Fear of rejection.

Gaara understands.

He flips his hand.

Lets their fingers intertwine.

“I do not have very much to tell,” Gaara says. “I am studying for my masters degree. I...read?”

Lee chuckles. His fingers twitch in the prison of Gaara’s grip.

There a scars here too. Up the inside of his arm. Snaking to his elbow and back down. Jagged.

“Masters degree in,” Lee trails off.

“Geological engineering.”

Another laugh. Lee’s head tipping toward him. “That sounds fancy.”

“Not really. Risk assessment, seismic investigation. It’s important work but it’s not glamorous exactly.”

“I think that’s pretty interesting,” Lee says.

“You don’t have to flatter me. It’s not something most people would find interesting.”

Lee’s nose wrinkles. Gaara is getting better and better at catching his tells.

“You find something I said funny,” Gaara accuses.

“No,” Lee says. “Just you.”

Gaara should be insulted, but the warmth with which Lee says it negates any bite it could have.

“What about you?” Gaara asks because he understands enough about social cues to realize conversations should be reciprocal.

“Am I funny?” Lee says.

“What are you studying?”

“Mm. That. Working on my Ph.D for sports management,” Lee says. “I want to own my own gym one day like Sensei does. He says that getting the actual training for it will showcase my Dedication and Drive and will look good on resumes.”

“Anyone who meets you should be able to see how driven you are,” Gaara says. Practically strangers and Gaara can see it. Lee lives and breathes sincerity. He sweats earnestness.

It’s refreshing in a way; an outlook so wholly different from Gaara’s own. Without the shields and shields and shields.

Lee makes a noise, tipping his head this way and that. Blushing again.

The bus drives on.

Their hands still touch.

The bus drives on.

Gaara allows himself to doze. Sleepless night catching up with him, lulled by the repetitive hum of the engine. The window is cool against his forehead. Lee’s hand is warm in his own. It’s not safe, sleep is never safe, but it’s a close as he has felt in a while.

There is no brick wall.

There is no uncle pressing his foot to the accelerator.

Lee is breathing next to him, a warm present reality. Something that is. The brick wall was. It is not now.

It is not now.

“It’s our stop, Gaara-kun,” Lee is saying. Tugging Gaara’s hand, rousing him. He lets go before standing up and something in Gaara aches at the loss. Like the all too familiar loneliness that has become such a staple to him. More muted than usual but there nonetheless.

Dangerous thinking.

Gaara prunes it from his mind.

He follows Lee off the bus.

They loiter at the stop as it pulls away from them.

“I live with roommates,” Lee says. Swallowing. “Kiba works nights but...”

“I live alone.”

“And you’re sure about this?”

He keeps asking that like the answer will change. That apprehensive expression. Waiting for something Gaara does not understand. Breath hitched, throat trembling.

Gaara holds his hand out, palm up.

Lee takes it.

It’s an answer.

—  
“God, Gaara-kun,” Lee is saying. They’re barely in the door, hardly through it before Gaara is pivoting into Lee’s space. It closes with their combined weight pressing against it. Gaara doesn’t even bother reaching out to lock it.

He’s too busy flattening himself as tight as he can to Lee’s taller form.

Desperate.

Lee smells like soap, a cheap chemical deodorant Gaara can taste when he inhales. Lee has a hand on his side, one in his hair, and their kissing again. Lee is kissing him again. In a breathless, shameless rush.

They can take their time here; no public indecently to fret in the safety of Gaara’s home, but the tingling sensation of need it too great.

Gaara is already hard—throbbing—trapped against Lee’s hip.

“I want to—“ Gaara starts to say. Cuts himself off as a groan rolls through him.

There are too many things he wants to do and Lee is too good but too brief. Momentary. Shocking. This will end, eventually, Lee will move on and there will not be a...a This for Gaara anymore.

This will end.

And he will be alone.

Is it worth it?

Lee is staring at him, wide-eyed, flushed. Lips pink. His nails scratch at Gaara’s scalp. Giving everything to this moment. Are you sure he had asked.

Are you sure.

And Gaara is.

He can handle this. Having a This, momentary as it may be, will help him. Having the experience will allow him to shut it down before it begins next time.

He will be more efficient at ending it.

And for the moment, it can be so, so good.

He drops to his knees like they did in some of the videos. Lee, still leaning back against the door, watches him like he is frozen in place. His stomach trembles when Gaara hikes his shirt up to run his tongue along his abs. The muscles contract when Gaara presses a kiss just to the left of Lee’s belly button.

“It tickles, Gaara-kun,” he says.

The words come easier than they should; a natural progression: “Do you want me to stop?”

Lee shakes his head so violently the door rattles in its frame. “No,” Lee says. “I-I-I should probably warn you that I...it’s been...a very long time since I’ve had this done so...”

Gaara grins. His teeth scrape over the muscles, the straining, flexing swell of them. “You do not know what I’m going to do,” he says.

Lee’s head thunks back against the door again. His bangs fall to cover his eyes. Both hands now in Gaara’s hair. Pressure urging him down. “I didn’t take you for a tease,” he says. It’s pleading, in its own way. Lee reduced to this. Only a step or so above begging.

The power trip goes to Gaara’s head and fills him with a sense of charity. He presses his lips to the conjunction of Lee’s hips, where his pants are tented with his growing erection. Gaara laves his tongue against where the head should be. Sucks the material there between his teeth.

Lee curses above him. Voice fluttering over the nonsense syllables and Gaara’s name; half-intoned whining. He’s not quiet.

Gaara likes that.

Likes that it takes his mind off the task before him. A distraction to the fact he has very little idea what he is doing. Encouraging in its enthusiasm; in the way Lee’s fingers tug impatiently in his hair. A burst of salt and a spot of spreading wetness in the nylon of Lee’s shorts.

Getting them out of the way is a problem Gaara isn’t sure how to solve.

He is saved from the dilemma when after a moment more of suction, Lee is clawing at his own waistband to push the pants down and out of the way. Barely a second of disconnect between Gaara’s lips and his cock. A breath, nothing more.

And here, at the very center of him, is Lee’s smell again. That thick, musky sweat scent. Affirming and masculine. Gaara places little closed mouth kisses up and down Lee’s shaft as he inhales. Drinking up the smell that should be gross but only serves to get his blood pumping higher. Something primal in it.

And Lee’s cock.

Lee’s cock.

An extension of him, proportioned and lanky. Same ruddy, brown-red as his blush. Slightly darker at the head. The details are just that, peripheral, unimportant. It is Lee’s and having it is his mouth is the important thing. Dragging his tongue around the head of it. Tasting the salty thickness of his precum.

Lee’s own hand holds the base, combined grip of that and the one in Gaara’s hair, guiding it past Gaara’s lips and into his mouth proper.

Probably would have been easier if Gaara had done it; but his hands are locked around Lee’s thighs and he cannot scrape together the will to move them.

Lee is panting, shaking. Groaning still. “Gaara,” he says, the honorific dropped for the moment it seems. “Gaara, Gaara, please.”

Gaara blinks.

He thinks of the videos, all the movement and bobbing motions.

Right.

He was doing something here.

Experimentally he pushes further, his mouth stretched wide, not the most comfortable he’s ever been. He pulls back, Lee’s grip in his hair doesn’t let him get too far but, it’s enough to sort of simulate the videos.

He keeps the motions shallow, getting into it, getting used to it. Lee is still babbling above him, eyes still wide, wide, wide staring unblinking down Gaara’s mouth.

Another rush of power, tingling, clenching strangeness. Gaara feels confident in a way that is based solely on instinct and not practice. He opens further, swallows deeper. Lee’s cock hits his soft palette, makes him gag, eyes watering, sudden slosh of drool. Gaara pulls back, choking, coughing. His fingers gripping Lee’s thigh tight enough to bruise.

Finger shaped shadows in the maze of scars.

“Sorry,” Lee says. “I’m sorry. Gaara...I—“

Gaara is going to ask what. Is putting the sentence together when it happens.

Orgasm.

Lee’s body tensing, bending away from the door in an arc. His cock pulses, Gaara sees the twitching just a second before it’s over. Semen splatting across Gaara’s nose, his lips. Shocking. Hot, hotter than Gaara expects, each stripe molten where it hits him.

Shocking.

Gaara takes a breath. Blinks.

He doesn’t have time to truly process what has happened before Lee is collapsing practically on top of him. Lee pulling his own shirt off, swiping it across Gaara’s face.

“God, I’m...I’m sorry, Gaara...kun. Gaara. I—that is—“ he looks so panicked. Red-cheeked. Embarrassed.

Gaara doesn’t know where it comes from, but suddenly he is laughing. It’s ridiculous. They are ridiculous. And he can’t stop. The laughter bubbles up from his stomach, from down at the very core of him.

He holds Lee’s face between his hands. Leans their foreheads together and he laughs.

He’s never laughed this much before in his life.

Eventually Lee joins him; chuckling, grinning now, something still slightly apologetic in it. But he’s coming down from it. His arms wrap around Gaara’s shoulders, pull him in. Entangling them further.

There is not much laughing in porn; this wasn’t in the script, but it feels right. Feels better than right. Gaara sighs, breathes through his nose; his lips touching Lee’s cheek, Lee’s nose.

And then they are kissing again. Gaara lets Lee lead the motion, Lee maneuvering them until it is Gaara with his back to the door. Gaara with his legs spread and Lee between them. Lee’s palm rutting up against Gaara’s cock.

It’s not so funny any more. Gaara, breathless from it, barely has air in his lungs to groan. He flexes his hips up into Lee’s grip. He curls his fingers around Lee’s ear.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Lee admits. Biting his lip. Talented fingers—dexterous, perfect—undoing the zip of Gaara’s trousers. “I want to return the favor.”

Like Gaara is putting up any resistance. He’s not. He’s far too gone for that. Lee’s fingers have barely wrapped around him and he’s thrusting into the grip. Holding Lee’s face against his, too worked up to kiss but panting into Lee’s mouth. Panting against Lee’s chin, his jaw. Any and everywhere.

It’s over quickly.

Lee’s fingers press tight to the vein right below the head and Gaara loses it. Not even as much warning as Lee had given. He grunts once, his eyes flutter shut, and then he is finished.

Bonelessly his body breaks into orgasm, leaving him slumping against the door and Lee’s solid weight. They both sit there, still tangled, limbs thrown haphazardly over one another, until their breathing has steadied and the prickling of their intermingled sweat becomes too much.

Gaara pulls away first.

Extracts himself out from under Lee.

He swallows. Tries to speak and has to clear his throat before he can. “The bathroom,” he starts to say. Licking his lips so his voice won’t sound so alien and thick. “It’s that way. If you want—need to wash your hands.”

Lee looks down at the mess of it and Gaara is reminded of doing the same just yesterday. Staring at the spilled white across his palm. He wipes most of it onto his already stained tank top. He pulls himself to standing.

Naked.

Standing in Gaara’s foyer; not even in the apartment proper. They didn’t even make it past the closet.

Lee doesn’t seem particularly self conscious. He finds his pants where he had kicked them, steps back into them with little fanfare.

He keeps looking at his palm. “I guess I should,” he says. “After that I...”

He trails off. Meets Gaara’s gaze. Expectant. Gaara shrugs.

“My shirts might be too small for you,” Gaara says.

Lee grins but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He rolls the dirty tank top between his hands. “It’s not my first walk of shame, Gaara-kun, I’ll be fine. It’s part of...the Passions of Beautiful Youth, right?”

Gaara doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

But he also doesn’t really want him to leave.

Not yet anyway.

“I...I meant you can. Do laundry,” Gaara says. Too quickly. Lee’s eyes widen, his fingers curl. “I need to do mine too so. It’s. Fine. Convenient. No bother.”

Lee nods. “So long as it isn’t any trouble,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art cross posted to tumblr: https://qyoo.tumblr.com/post/172024264307/for-chapter-3-of-vrunkas-gaaralee-fic-this-is


	4. Chapter 4

Gaara has only just loaded the washer when Lee’s hands slip around his sides. Cupping his chest. Plastering himself to Gaara’s back. The sweatshirt Gaara had dug out for him is laying forgotten and crumpled on the dryer.

Lee’s skin is like a flame. Warm enough to almost be uncomfortable. Gaara arches back into him. His hands locked around the edge of the washing machine as it rumbles to life beneath them.

Lee hooks his chin over Gaara’s shoulder. Kisses his cheek. His fingers stroke down the line of Gaara’s jaw, slide across his lips. Gaara opens his mouth at their slight pressure, sucks them like he had Lee’s cock not that long ago.

Tasting old sweat. Tasting cologne. Gaara shudders, Lee sighs.

“You’re much more...orally fixated than I imagined,” Lee says. Turning his head to brush his nose down Gaara’s cheek. His bangs thick and tickling beside Gaara’s eye.

“You imagined this?” Gaara asks. Taken by surprise, blinking. His hips twitch into the unforgiving metal of the washer, thinking of all the things he allowed himself to imagine and putting Lee in that same position.

Lee imaging this.

Lee wanting to be fucked like this or to fuck him like this.

“You licked me as some bizarre courting gesture,” Lee says. There’s a laugh in his words. “I think I’m allowed to indulge a little after that.”

“Right...”

“You don’t think so?” Lee’s nose wrinkles. But his eyes are suddenly focused on Gaara’s; his hand coming up to cradle Gaara’s face.

Depth perception thrown off from how close they are again. The trajectory of what they are doing is out of Gaara’s control. And that’s terrifying.

Lee’s fingers trace the scar at his hairline and for the first time Gaara feels the flip switch of nausea and panic that usually accompanies being touched.

He takes a breath. Cranes his neck away from Lee’s fingers. “I told you not to get the wrong idea,” he says. “It’s just a physical...thing. Need. That we’re...”

“Fulfilling. Yeah; I know,” Lee says. “Does that mean that I’m not allowed to enjoy this?”

Gaara isn’t sure.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he admits.

“You think too much.” Lee turns him with a hand on his hip. Still trapped against the washer, but now with his back to it. “Sometimes you just have to feel these things. You know. Let Instinct guide you. Is this how you’ve been with...with the other people you have been with.”

The second been is emphasized. Drawn out. Innuendo. Lee’s discretion again although they are both shirtless and the memory of Lee’s cock against his tongue is still so fresh and raw. Lee’s discretion.

“I haven’t,” Gaara says. He does not want to talk about this. He does not want to be talking.

And so he won’t.

He ducks out from under Lee’s arms. Grabs the sweatshirt and drags it over his head. To his credit, Lee doesn’t try and stop him. He watches silent as Gaara stalks out of the laundry room and back into the living room.

He follows after a minute. Sits in the armchair opposite the one Gaara has folded himself into.

Still shirtless.

Like he knows the effect it has on Gaara. Like he’s teasing him. His nipples are brown, peaked a little in the apartment air. The sweatpants Gaara had pulled for him are too loose and too short. They stop above his ankles and hang indecently from his hips.

Gaara wants to be mad at him for prying, for making this into something bigger than it needs to be, but he can’t seem to hold onto the thread of his anger. It spirals past him and there is only aching fear left in its wake.

Yashamaru had told him as they hurtled toward the wall, as death loomed before them, that no one would ever love him. That the loneliness was his ally and that death was an escape for the both of them.

He had told Gaara all about the sickness in Gaara’s mind. How it would only hurt people.

He had told him that wounds of the heart like those he would amass if he continued to live would never heal. Because no one could love him.

In that moment Gaara had been crying and afraid. Snot on his chin. Fingers like iron around Yashamaru’s wrist.

And then the wall.

And the wreckage.

And the blood.

“What are your scars from?” Gaara asks. He is staring down at his lap. The folds in the sleep pants he is wearing.

He can see the way Lee looks up at him. “I...was defending an ideal,” Lee says, “of someone that I loved. And I...I picked the wrong battle.”

“What does that mean?” Gaara asks, meeting Lee’s gaze.

“It means my bones were so broken, so shattered they thought I might...I was told that I wouldn’t walk again. Fight again. Train again.” Lee swallows. “I’ve proven them wrong. All of them were wrong.”

“Someone beat you up?”

“The fall isn’t the important part of the hero’s journey. It’s how he rises from the ashes that matters.” Lee blushes. He grins. “Or at least that’s what Sensei says.”

“Do they hurt still?”

Lee stands. Walks closer. Holds his arm down for Gaara’s inspection. The winding patchwork of wounds; healed over but the reminder remains.

“Nah,” Lee says. “They don’t hurt at all anymore. They’re just...ugly. But Sensei says a life lived Beautifully will leave its Lasting Mark upon the body.”

Gaara swallows. His fingers map the raised and delicate markings. The hills and valleys of it. His own skin is pristine in comparison. Only the nicks on his forehead to prove anything but a normal and steady life.

His tongue itches. The back of his throat aches. Just a little longer. He can indulge himself in this just a little longer.

From the laundry room, the washer buzzes. The load is finished. Lee turns to glance over his shoulder.

“Almost time to go,” he says.

And the way he says it.

So inevitable.

Gaara aches and he aches and he doesn’t know what he wants. It’s all too tangled and snarled and splintered within him but at the center of it all is Lee. Gaara wraps his fingers around Lee’s wrist, they don’t quite make it the whole way around.

Lee looks down at him.

The washer buzzes and buzzes.

—

They end up in the bedroom.

Lee laying on his side, Gaara on his back. Staring the ceiling. This was not in the videos. He does not know what to do in this position.

But Lee is hard against his thigh, fingers splayed over Gaara’s stomach as he traces Gaara’s collarbone with his nose. Breath moist and hot on Gaara’s oversensitive skin. Lips against his pec.

Gaara feels feverish. Sweating and too tight in his skin.

The hoodie hangs from the headboard; the sleeve trails across his forehead.

He reaches up to brush it out of the way but his hand gets sidetracked in Lee’s hair instead. Cupping the back of his skull the same way Lee had earlier. Nebulous encouragement. He wants more of this, whatever this is.

“You’re so beautiful,” Lee says. It’s quiet. Treading dangerous territory. Treading thin ice.

Gaara isn’t. He shakes his head. “Don’t say that,” he says.

Lee’s eyes, wide and trusting soften. The edges go watery. “Okay,” he says. And then he’s licking at Gaara’s nipple.

The sensations are...

Strange.

A blunt sort of pressure similar to when his cock had been stroked yet different. Not as urgent. When this happened in porn it was like electricity, surging groaning pleasure, arching, loud desire.

Gaara feels none of that.

It tickles, itches, not unpleasant but not what he is expecting either. He makes a token sound, Lee’s name over sort of a groan. Lee’s teeth scrape over it and it’s closer to something alive, something real. Actual feeling.

“Again,” Gaara says. Demands. Lee’s eyes flicker up to him, a question mark in the quirk of his brows. Gaara’s fingers lock in his hair. “You can bite,” he says, breathless. “Feels better that way.”

Lee’s mouth leaves him, a shaky exhale, fingers trembling as Lee shudders, full-bodied against him. “Can...can you say it again?”

Gaara blinks. The ceiling remains as unchanged as ever. Gaara tips his head to look down at Lee. “I want you to bite me,” Gaara says, “because it feels good.”

“I’m making you feel good?”

Gaara shifts so his erection is more apparent. He doesn’t answer. Lee chuckles, his eyes close. “What if it leaves marks, Gaara-kun?”

Gaara shrugs as best he can in this flattened position, shoulders rolling awkwardly against the mattress. “I don’t mind marks if it feels good.”

Another shudder, smaller scale this time, just Lee’s hips thrusting against him. His teeth are relentless. Sudden sharp, tugging at Gaara’s flesh. He doesn’t draw it out, he doesn’t tease.

This desperation Gaara feels so keenly is mutual it seems.

Lee’s mouth moves off the nipple proper, he bites down off center, closer to Gaara’s sternum. Sucks the flesh until it is aching and buzzing and good, good, good. Gaara groans his appreciation, Gaara shivers out his pleasure.

The wave crests and crests.

Gaara thinks of quicksand, the ultimately empty fascination he had had with it as a child. This encompassing, engulfing, smothering feeling is what he had imagined it would feel like to be swallowed into the vortex of one.

Lee rolls over him. A moment of shuffling, pulling their pants down and out of the way and then there is a cock pressed against his own, held tightly by Lee’s large hand. Callouses in places Gaara does not recognize. Strange feeling them, trapped a sticky against another erection. Strange, strange.

But not dissatisfying.

And Gaara understands this position, pinned under Lee, better than the one before. He bends a leg, drags it up to pull Lee harder against him. It messes with Lee’s rhythm, but Lee adapts quickly.

His thrusts shorten.

His breathing stutters against Gaara’s throat. Teeth bared to trace the straining tendons, clipping over Gaara’s Adam’s apple, biting at his pulse point.

It’s the act of him pressing his tongue there, sucking hard at the skin caught messy between his teeth, that actually pushes Gaara over the edge. There is something about being marked—claimed—in that way that strikes a chord deep, deep in Gaara’s gut.

He comes between them with a grunt. Muscles snapping taut, going rigid. His mind doesn’t quite go white but it fills with static, with sand. When Gaara manages to pull himself back to the present, he finds himself still under Lee’s weight. Lee atop him, heavy.

His neck hurts. No not hurts. Stings. A mild annoyance. Same down his chest. Gaara glances down, can see littering little bruises all along his left pec. The top of Lee’s head, hair shiny with his sweat, resting against Gaara’s other side.

Gaara shifts.

Lee makes a grumpy noise, but rolls off of him.

Gaara’s stomach and crotch is mess of their combined ejaculate. Frowning, Gaara wipes his hand through it. Already beginning to cool, thick and viscous.

“I can get you a towel,” Lee says.

Gaara looks down at him. At his eyes and his lips and his hair all pushed out of place. He has the most bizarre urge to run his clean hand through it, to part the heavy strands of Lee’s bangs with his fingers.

But doesn’t.

He stands. Fixes his pants.

His knees only shake a little bit as he drags himself to the bathroom down the hall.

The water is cold as it washes the come from his fingers. He stares at his reflection as he shuts the water off. The bruise on his neck, a finger’s length below his pulse point. It is a dark, angry purple red. Little rings of darker color from Lee’s teeth.

Gaara smiles.

Presses his fingers to it, just to feel the sharper reminder of it.

Lee hasn’t moved much when Gaara gets back to the bedroom. His eyes are shut, chest moving steadily with his breathing. The borrowed pants fixed back over his hips. Modesty, maybe, regret maybe. Impossible to tell.

Gaara doesn’t want to wake him but he says: “Laundry will be done in thirty minutes, you should...go. After that.”

Though he doesn’t want him to.

He doesn’t want him to.

Lee’s eyes open. His gaze meets Gaara’s before dropping. He blushes. Must be looking at the hickey. Gaara doesn’t shift or try and cover it any.

“Thirty minutes?” Lee echoes.

Gaara nods.

“Do...” Lee’s brows come together. Another tell, though Gaara isn’t sure of what. He has seen the gesture enough to understand that it means something. “Did you want to lay down until then? I can...move or...or—“

“You can stay there. Sleep. I’ll wake you. I have reading to do anyway,” Gaara says.

He turns as he says it. Closes the door behind him as he goes. He finds his bag where he had dropped it by the door. His earmarked book, his neglected work.

In thirty minutes the dryer will call him and he will wake Lee and Lee will leave. For good or not for good. Gaara has no real way of knowing.

He can only hope...dare to hope.

The brightness of it sits foreign in his chest. Circular and goading and scary. His heart aches. Wounded.

So maybe this is what Yashamaru meant.

**Author's Note:**

> Art cross posted to tumblr: https://qyoo.tumblr.com/post/171757987582/visual-aid-to-go-with-vrunkass-gaaralee


End file.
